Scottish conservation group maps the decline of British eagles

Habitat loss and hunting were two big factors in the eagles' sad story.

A comprehensive study using records spanning 1,500 years shows how white-tailed and golden eagles were once found across Britain and Ireland, but populations plummeted as a result of human activity.

A research team from RSPB Scotland mapped the population of both eagles between 500 AD and the present day, by using historical records, scientific knowledge of the birds' ecology and even by looking for places with names that suggested they once were home to eagles.

That includes towns like Aron Crag in Cumbria, which means "Eagle Cliff" in Old English; Arndale Hole in North Yorkshire, which means "Eagle Valley" in Norse; and Knockananiller in Dublin, which is "Eagle Hill" in Irish Gaelic.

The results showed a steep decline, with golden eagle numbers dropping by two-thirds from 1000-1500 breeding pairs in 500AD to just 300-500 in 1800. White-tailed eagles were hit even harder, as 80 to 90 percent of the population was lost over the same period.

The white-tailed eagle was eventually driven to extinction in Britain in the early years of the 1900s, thanks to continued killing by humans. Golden eagles almost exclusively live in Scotland, now, with about 440 breeding pairs presently alive.

"The results of this study are striking as they provide compelling evidence that eagles were widespread throughout most of Britain and Ireland in the Dark Ages," said RSPB Scotland's Richard Evans, lead author of the study.

"Between 500 and 1800 we see massive loss of eagle range in the south, which is consistent with the effects of habitat loss and killing by humans."

The white-tailed eagle was reintroduced to the Isle of Rum, in the Small Isles archipelago in Scotland, in 1975. It now breeds throughout the Western Isles and the mainland coast of Wester Ross, but its population is a shadow of what it was in the Dark Ages.

Ars Technica. Wired. What do the eagles have to do with the Art of Technology or Technology in general? Someone accidentally posted this on the wrong website. This is a disturbing trend over recent months and years.

Ars Technica. Wired. What do the eagles have to do with the Art of Technology or Technology in general? Someone accidentally posted this on the wrong website. This is a disturbing trend over recent months and years.

This. What is this environmental news doing on Ars? Is Ars a technical blog or a general science blog? I thought it was a tech blog.

Ars Technica. Wired. What do the eagles have to do with the Art of Technology or Technology in general? Someone accidentally posted this on the wrong website. This is a disturbing trend over recent months and years.

Have you not been reading Ars long? Science articles have been posted here for as long as I've been reading. Almost a decade?

The real problem is game keepers living in the past, Eagles should have made better progress since we banned DDT etc but unfortunately like Goshawks and Harriers they are persecuted (shot, poisoned, trapped, nests destroyed) by game keepers and unlike Buzzards and Kites (which have recovered very well) they are very territorial and take longer to spread and need large upland territories. Despite the police and RSPB trying to monitor nesting sites they can't stop the killing. So yes some humans are evil, destroying one of our natural national treasures, arguably our most magnificent wild animal for no reason is in my opinion evil.

Ars Technica. Wired. What do the eagles have to do with the Art of Technology or Technology in general? Someone accidentally posted this on the wrong website. This is a disturbing trend over recent months and years.

Funny that I today, before I saw this article, was wondering why people who pay for a monthly subscription gets Wired articles. One of the benefits of subscribing is the lack of ads, and I consider Wired articles as ads.

Ars Technica. Wired. What do the eagles have to do with the Art of Technology or Technology in general? Someone accidentally posted this on the wrong website. This is a disturbing trend over recent months and years.

If only it were somehow possible to just ignore articles that don't interest you... by not clicking on them, perhaps...

Seriously, I don't get the whining that happens every time an article appears on Ars that is a little outside the usual remit. It's not like anyone is being forced at gunpoint to read them.

Don't you mean, "How dare an ecology outlet report on science!" But seriously, I do appreciate the breadth of science coverage on Ars. I'd love to see a little less about ecology and more about other interesting swatches of science, because Ars is a bit environment-heavy at the expense of the many other things going on in the sciences which could be of interest to an educated science-and-tech-savvy readership; but you can't have everything, and the editors are interested in what they're interested in and biased toward what they're biased toward.

I do have to question the value of the biased environmentalist/activist tone which underpins most of these articles, though. Why is it "the eagles' sad story" and why is their smaller population "a shadow of what it was in the Dark ages," with the implicit moral stance which those word choices imply? Bias is invisible to those who have it, but it's quite clear to those who don't (or whose biases run counter). There is a certain perverse worship of stasis and of specific idealized past and present states of nature which is endemic to environmentalism/activism/extremism, and often runs counter to interests of civilization, humanism, and technology.

Humans change their environment, both deliberately and as a side-effect of their various other activities. This has been the case since prehistory, and will continue to be; while we're more aware of the impacts of our activities and should make educated choices regarding them at present and in future, we shouldn't fall into the misanthropic trap of denigrating human interests of the past, present, or future, in favor of an arbitrary elevation of idealized states of nature.

For example, the decline in eagle populations is unsurprising and morally neutral. Hungry people sometimes ate them, and killed them to protect livestock and to increase populations of prey birds which humans wanted to eat more of; they also lost habitat to humans as human populations increased and adapted their environment to better suit them. The decline in eagle populations in a certain geographic area is hardly a lamentable or extraordinary thing in and of itself--no more so than the natural displacement of one species by another which has occurred since the beginnings of life, and which has been a necessary part of the development and advancement of Earth's species. And yet, it's "sad" and the eagles are "a shadow" of their former selves.

Now that we're more aware of our environment and our impacts on it, and of the advantages of biodiversity and species preservation (where there are such advantages from a human and/or general ecosystem health perspective--not out of an arbitrary bias toward stasis), efforts to protect threatened species or reintroduce species should be enacted wherever they're rational. But it's not rational to allow a sentimental bias toward arbitrary natural states to dictate such decisions, or to creep into our thinking and reportage.

The Ars article is short on details or links, so I can't speak to the rationality of the eagle conservation and reintroduction efforts it mentions and will assume they're reasonable and laudable; but that brings me to the obvious question: since Ars is a scientifically and technically literate audience, where are the article's links appropriate to that audience? A quick search for terms like "rspb scotland eagles" doesn't turn up anything new and interesting and indicates the recent popular news coverage may be a PR rehashing of the organization's efforts, which were extensively publicized last year. Why crosspost these Wired articles if they aren't going to be at all tailored to the Ars audience, in cases like this where they're popular fluffpieces?

Ars Technica. Wired. What do the eagles have to do with the Art of Technology or Technology in general? Someone accidentally posted this on the wrong website. This is a disturbing trend over recent months and years.

At least you can ignore and click on another link. I was really pissed when a recent printed issue of National Geographic had a huge feature on Civil War. Like 20% of the entire magazine. WTF?

Ars Technica. Wired. What do the eagles have to do with the Art of Technology or Technology in general? Someone accidentally posted this on the wrong website. This is a disturbing trend over recent months and years.

At least you can ignore and click on another link. I was really pissed when a recent printed issue of National Geographic had a huge feature on Civil War. Like 20% of the entire magazine. WTF?

AHA! I knew it! Time for a mass-suicide, huh? Man, we humans are so evil... pure evil!

No, just largely ignorant.

Except it's not ignorance in this case, it's knowledge of how to exterminate what is seen as a pest by game keepers, they know what they are doing alright.

No, it is ignorance.

The plague is upon us. It must be the wicked and their cats. Kill the cats. Too bad it was the fleas from the rats that carried the plague...Wolves are pests so we kill them off and find coyote and deer populations get out of hand and do far more damage than the wolves ever did.Wildfires are bad so we put them out and find juniper forests grow and dominate the land, sucking the ground dry.The ground is too hard. Bust that sod! Only after the drought the wind blows the topsoil away.Water the desert and it will bloom. Water too much and salt rises from the ground poisoning the soil.

That includes towns like Aron Crag in Cumbria, which means "Eagle Cliff" in Old English; Arndale Hole in North Yorkshire, which means "Eagle Valley" in Norse; and Knockananiller in Dublin, which is "Eagle Hill" in Irish Gaelic.

Makes me think, here in australia, just north on the outskirts of sydney, we have a little island in the hawkesbury river called "Lion Island", we must have made them extinct from there!

I do have to question the value of the biased environmentalist/activist tone which underpins most of these articles, though. Why is it "the eagles' sad story" and why is their smaller population "a shadow of what it was in the Dark ages," with the implicit moral stance which those word choices imply?

Well, gee, I dunno. I would think that having a more eagles means that the future of the species is more secure. And now you will probably ask "why is it bad for eagles to become extinct?". Well, I believe that eagles (and all species of animals) have value in on themselves. And besides, there's still a lot that we can learn. If the species becomes extict, well it makes that learning quite a bit harder, don't you think?

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Bias is invisible to those who have it, but it's quite clear to those who don't (or whose biases run counter). There is a certain perverse worship of stasis and of specific idealized past and present states of nature which is endemic to environmentalism/activism/extremism, and often runs counter to interests of civilization, humanism, and technology.

Is a world without eagles a better world that one with them?

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Humans change their environment, both deliberately and as a side-effect of their various other activities. This has been the case since prehistory, and will continue to be; while we're more aware of the impacts of our activities and should make educated choices regarding them at present and in future, we shouldn't fall into the misanthropic trap of denigrating human interests of the past, present, or future, in favor of an arbitrary elevation of idealized states of nature.

So, hoping that eagles thrive and live on is misantrophy? That if I like eagles, it now means that I hate humans?

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[And yet, it's "sad" and the eagles are "a shadow" of their former selves.

Yes, yes it is. Even if eagles presented a clear and present danger to the existence of humanity, and we had to wipe them out to ensure our own survival, it would still be sad.

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Now that we're more aware of our environment and our impacts on it, and of the advantages of biodiversity and species preservation

Then why are you whining about the fact that it's sad that eagle-population has plummeted?

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But it's not rational to allow a sentimental bias toward arbitrary natural states to dictate such decisions, or to creep into our thinking and reportage.

No climate change global warming to blame? Impossible!Please check again. It must be the cause!

Please don't. The two phenomena share the same cause. Human activities.

AHA! I knew it! Time for a mass-suicide, huh? Man, we humans are so evil... pure evil!

I would like to respectfully submit that ths is precisely what is happening.

Maybe the term mass-suicide could be substituted by «inexorable path to self-destruction» because of the involuntary and unconscious nature of the actions but I still accept the notion — much like the 1978 Jonestown event (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown) can be called a mass-suicide, a massacre or a religious sacrifice depending on which POV you choose to subscribe to.

Ars Technica. Wired. What do the eagles have to do with the Art of Technology or Technology in general? Someone accidentally posted this on the wrong website. This is a disturbing trend over recent months and years.

At least you can ignore and click on another link. I was really pissed when a recent printed issue of National Geographic had a huge feature on Civil War. Like 20% of the entire magazine. WTF?

Why did this annoy you though? I found it fascinating. And it wasn't really about the civil war from what I remember, but about the battlefield artists who covered it, which seems well within their remit.

I do have to question the value of the biased environmentalist/activist tone which underpins most of these articles, though. Why is it "the eagles' sad story" and why is their smaller population "a shadow of what it was in the Dark ages," with the implicit moral stance which those word choices imply?

Well, gee, I dunno. I would think that having a more eagles means that the future of the species is more secure.

I think it's safe to say that barring any unforeseen cataclysm which would be bad for many more species than just eagles and humans, there are a variety of eagle populations stable enough to ensure that they'll survive indefinitely now that humans in the developed world are no longer killing them indiscriminately. We'll very likely even develop and deploy over the coming century technology mature enough to catalog and preserve a broad sampling of their remaining genetic diversity, and in the longer term the capability to do more with that genetic diversity than merely catalog it. There's really little reason for pessimism.

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And now you will probably ask "why is it bad for eagles to become extinct?". Well, I believe that eagles (and all species of animals) have value in on themselves.

But what kind of value, and for whom? In and of themselves eagles have no more or less value than the countless hordes of species which have blinked in and out of existence since life began. As humans we ascribe to them more value and importance than they could have in themselves, because we have rational consciousness and emotive sentience which give them meaning and value of which they themselves are incapable.

To clarify my meaning, take the example of the trilobites. For 270 million years they were a diverse and significant part of the ecosystem; yet most species went extinct, presumably out-competed and preyed upon (much as eagles were at the hands of humans), before the last species were extinguished during the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event. They're interesting creatures and we've learned significantly from them as fossils, and were they alive today doubtless we'd learn something from living specimens and their genetics. But what makes the eagle and its survival or loss qualitatively different from the trilobite and its survival or loss, or that of the hundreds of millions to billions of other species which have blinked in and out of existence and will continue to do so? We certainly don't have a planet big enough and resources enough for all of them, nor any particular reason to believe the world would be "better" somehow had this species or that one survived.

I read an estimate that there are probably 8.7 million species currently extant; many of them will go extinct before we even discover they exist, and many of those extinctions will have had little to nothing to do with man. Their loss or survival is just nature at work. Even the loss or survival of species which have been in competition with or preyed upon by humans is merely nature at work. Yet, because we've developed an interest in certain species--typically out of sentiment or a general environmentalist ideological bias toward arbitrary present or past states, rather than out of a rational analysis that a given species is invaluable to the larger ecosystem--we give them and their survival a special and privileged value and devote resources to preserving or restoring their numbers and habitats.

Unfortunately, this is often a very arbitrary undertaking; for example, many of the waterways and wetlands which environmentalists fight to keep in or restore to a certain state are essentially man-made constructs with little resemblance to their "natural" forms, since humans eradicated beavers and other animals which had radically altered these landscapes since time immemorial. Likewise, many fish stocks considered "native" today which we spend tens of millions of dollars yearly to protect from "invasive" species, were actually themselves "invasive" species introduced by humans in the 17th through early 20th centuries.

There are a few examples, such as wolves, of species whose conservation or reintroduction is the result of carefully considered and rational concern for the larger ecosystem. In many other cases, however, efforts to preserve species are made (often at very significant economic and human costs) merely out of the reflexive environmentalist tendency to try to preserve an arbitrary status quo. This sometimes has...interesting consequences...e.g., preventing smaller natural forest fires from doing their work, which builds up brush and leads to out-of-control fires which devastate larger areas and completely destroy habitats, which drives away the species people were attempting to protect in the first place, and has serious human casualties along the way:

But at any rate, whether it's eagles or trilobites, animals have more value through human eyes and priorities than they do as cogs blinking in and out of existence in the natural order. Whether we should always and universally ascribe them with such value is another question...

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And besides, there's still a lot that we can learn. If the species becomes extict, well it makes that learning quite a bit harder, don't you think?

Indeed, and I'm certainly not against preserving species, whether they're attractive and widely valued like eagles or whether they're less so (like random little-known insect species). What I am against is the arbitrary or unreasoned valuation of any or all species above others, or above human concerns, merely because they're potentially in danger of extinction. Hundreds of millions to billions of species have gone extinct during Earth's history, and millions more will; this is nature at work. Whether they were out-competed and preyed upon by humans over the past few thousand years, or by something else millions of years ago, there's no inherent moral or ethical distinction and it's either foolish or arrogant to presume there is. However, now that humans in advanced cultures have developed a greater consciousness of environmental impacts and ecosystem interrelationships, and an affinity for certain animals and environments, it's perfectly reasonable to choose to conserve or even reintroduce certain species. But this should be a reflective and rational process, not a reflexive and emotional one. Too often environmentalism concerns itself with a sentimental defense of arbitrary states which are no more "natural" or desirable than others, such as expending vast resources trying to preserve tiny populations of threatened species which are being out-competed or losing habitat to climate change, or protecting species which humans once introduced as invasive species a century ago from new invasive species. Some reason and moderation are in order.

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Bias is invisible to those who have it, but it's quite clear to those who don't (or whose biases run counter). There is a certain perverse worship of stasis and of specific idealized past and present states of nature which is endemic to environmentalism/activism/extremism, and often runs counter to interests of civilization, humanism, and technology.

Is a world without eagles a better world that one with them?

No, but it wouldn't of necessity be worse. I see little evidence that a world with trilobites would be better than a world without them.

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Humans change their environment, both deliberately and as a side-effect of their various other activities. This has been the case since prehistory, and will continue to be; while we're more aware of the impacts of our activities and should make educated choices regarding them at present and in future, we shouldn't fall into the misanthropic trap of denigrating human interests of the past, present, or future, in favor of an arbitrary elevation of idealized states of nature.

So, hoping that eagles thrive and live on is misantrophy? That if I like eagles, it now means that I hate humans?

Not at all, and I happen to like eagles myself. I hope the conservation and reintroduction project mentioned bears fruit. But there is a clear undercurrent of misanthropy and blame, and the view that man is somehow separate from nature, in much reportage about such issues. Should hungry humans of the past be "blamed" for eating eagles, or protecting livestock and game birds from them, any more than we blame wolves for eating deer, or blame whatever non-human species out-competes or preys upon another to or near extinction? Moreover, protecting a species because we make a conscious choice that it's worth protecting is one thing; the common environmentalist conceit that it's somehow a responsibility or necessity that we do so is quite another.

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[And yet, it's "sad" and the eagles are "a shadow" of their former selves.

Yes, yes it is. Even if eagles presented a clear and present danger to the existence of humanity, and we had to wipe them out to ensure our own survival, it would still be sad.

If we decide it's sad because we think eagles have attractive and worthwhile traits, and it's unfortunate for us to lose such interesting creatures, then that's reasonable and understandable. Many environmentalists however would take the position that losing any creature is sad because they have some sort of inherent nobility or right to exist, which in turn obligates us to expend resources protecting any and all threatened species. This is not very reasonable and understandable. Again, would a world with trilobites be better than ours? If so, what then of whatever species the trilobite crowded out, since resources aren't infinite?

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But it's not rational to allow a sentimental bias toward arbitrary natural states to dictate such decisions, or to creep into our thinking and reportage.

Mr. Spock, is that you?

Again, much of what we consider "natural" or "native," particularly in the U.S. and Europe, is really the result of extensive human environmental impact in recent centuries and is therefore actually neither. To automatically favor the current environment--or that of some point in the recent past--and slavishly expend resources trying to preserve or restore it out of a sense of environmental responsibility is therefore arbitrary and irrational. To preserve a species, like eagles, because we judge them to be exceptionally beautiful creatures worth the effort to save for future generations to enjoy, or because we judge their role in the ecosystem to be invaluable, is certainly a rational pursuit and good way to allocate our limited resources. But to preserve a species only because it's threatened, where we can't honestly judge them to be exceptional or invaluable, isn't a rational pursuit and may be a bad way to allocate our limited resources.

People ARE killing them, and habitat loss is still a major factor, conservationists have learned that 1. nature has a value to humans. 2. complete habitat preservation is the only real way to conserve, you can't and pick and choose species however the public respond well to iconic/fluffy creatures and maintaining Eagles maintains habitat for other species.

No climate change global warming to blame? Impossible!Please check again. It must be the cause!

Please don't. The two phenomena share the same cause. Human activities.

AHA! I knew it! Time for a mass-suicide, huh? Man, we humans are so evil... pure evil!

It's a start but not nearly enough I'm afraid.

I do hope they manage to bring back a semblance of population back to the mainland UK. They're doing an excellent job with the Red Kite. I'm sure Wales has some space for them, and Exmoor/Dartmoor or do they need to nest in cliff faces?

I'm sorry, but that is all just pointless BS. "oh, how do you define "value"? Why should we conserve them?". I have zero interest in your philosophical gymnastics and pseudointellectualism. I'll just say that eagles (and other species for that matter) have value in on themselves, and losing any of them is a tragedy. Does that mean that we should expend every bit of resources at our disposal at saving some random creature? No. There's a point at which it makes no sense anymore.

I've been referring to this lately as the "nostalgia factor." One of my favorite examples is Polar Bears: "oh, polar bears are cute, we need to preserve them!" (Polar bear cubs are cute, polar bear adults are large apex predators that can kill you, but anyway) The fact is, we can't. Polar ice caps and glaciers are an aberration on a geologic timescale, they will go away eventually, and polar bears will evolve into something else and survive, or die out. Just like T. Rex, Mammoths, and saber tooth cats. It may happen in 100 years, it may happen in 10,000, but it's inevitable, and it's natural. No amount of emotional attachment to a species makes it rational or reasonable to treat them like some mythical creature that must be preserved at all costs.

People who look at conservation as just trying to keep a single species around for the sake of "nostalgia" really don't understand ecology well enough to be arguing about it on the internet (and that's a pretty low bar). There are several important concepts that go into this, especially the idea of a "keystone species" and the knock-off effects of protection for one charismatic endangered species making it less likely that other important, but less comely, species in the same environment will be threatened. For those that are curious, biologists consider the golden eagle a keystone species for its environment, both in the UK and the US.

(And you might want to take out the 'Ireland' link: it links to an article on an Irish SOPA-like law, which is quite divorced from this article's topic.)

If those links had been there, I don't think there would have been any complaining about the article. Without them it reads like a fluff piece pointlessly copied from some environmentalist's press release; with them it's actually scientifically interesting.

mulholland wrote:

Note that Ars is divided into sections, and this post is in the section "Scientific Method: Science & Exploration."

You can choose not to read the posts in this section. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

I think criticisms of this article being posted to Ars, without knowledge of the original links from Wired, were legitimate and understandable--after all, without the link to the abstract the article is a fluff piece that has absolutely nothing to do with "Scientific Method: Science & Exploration."

I'm sorry, but that is all just pointless BS. "oh, how do you define "value"? Why should we conserve them?". I have zero interest in your philosophical gymnastics and pseudointellectualism. I'll just say that eagles (and other species for that matter) have value in on themselves, and losing any of them is a tragedy.

So, all living things have some mystical fluffy value inherent to themselves, the loss of trilobites is a scourge upon the Earth, etc. Got it.

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Does that mean that we should expend every bit of resources at our disposal at saving some random creature? No. There's a point at which it makes no sense anymore.

You're thankfully more rational than many in the environmentalist movement, including those in positions of real political authority right now. Just ask the Sacketts of Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, or the entire town of Tombstone, Arizona (link in previous post). A post just a bit above this one advocates using items like the eagle conservation effort as wedges for pushing a larger agenda, as "complete habitat preservation is the only real way to conserve, you can't and pick and choose species." So there are larger issues and sometimes agendas at work, even when something's being done which most people would agree with, like conserving and reintroducing eagles.

Wheels Of Confusion wrote:

People who look at conservation as just trying to keep a single species around for the sake of "nostalgia" really don't understand ecology well enough to be arguing about it on the internet (and that's a pretty low bar). There are several important concepts that go into this, especially the idea of a "keystone species"

Indeed, and I mentioned the conservation and reintroduction of the wolf as an example of such, where efforts were motivated by a rational deliberative process regarding the species' importance to its ecosystem. However, most species are not "keystone species" and their decline or loss not as significant an issue, and hence efforts to save them may in some cases be a waste of resources. Environmentalism has a palpable strain of extremism and irrational devotion to arbitrary environmental stasis; as I mentioned in my previous post, much of the environment we now make extraordinary efforts at extraordinary costs to preserve as-is and defend against "invasive species" has actually been radically transformed over the last several centuries by human activity such as eliminating the extensive and transformative beaver dams which used to be endemic all over U.S. bodies of water, and human introduction of fish species now considered "native" just a century or so after they displaced the real "natives." So we're often working to preserve an arbitrary human-induced environmental state out of ideology and nostalgia rather than to preserve an important natural ecosystem.

About 27% of the U.S., over a million square miles, is considered environmentally protected area; no one can argue that we don't take environmental conservation seriously. It's actually a legitimate question whether we sometimes do too much with the limited resources we have, particularly in specific cases; would the larger environment be significantly affected at all if the scarce Northern Spotted Owl, or the diminutive Snail Darter, quietly went extinct?

It's also a legitimate question whether we unjustly favor extreme prohibition of moderate human activity, as in the Sackett and Tombstone cases, or take courses of action too severe or ultimately pointless as in California's Delta-Smelt-induced droughts:

The point of my post was merely that efforts at conservation should be deliberative and rational, rather than knee-jerk emotive and ideological lashings-out at anything seen to have an effect on the arbitrary status quo. Where's the evidence that maintaining the status quo in all cases and at all costs is a worthwhile default position?

The point of my post was merely that efforts at conservation should be deliberative and rational, rather than knee-jerk emotive and ideological lashings-out at anything seen to have an effect on the arbitrary status quo.

The problem is that once endangered species are extinct, there is no going back. "Knee-jerk" preservation and conservation is necessary even if you want us to think hard about whether it's ultimately the course to go.

The point of my post was merely that efforts at conservation should be deliberative and rational, rather than knee-jerk emotive and ideological lashings-out at anything seen to have an effect on the arbitrary status quo.

The problem is that once endangered species are extinct, there is no going back.

Which matters why exactly? Most species that have existed are extinct, and not because of anything humans have done. As I asked above, is the world significantly diminished because we no longer have trilobites? And if they'd not gone extinct, what species would never have developed to fill the niches they left open? If we astonishingly found a cache of trilobites somewhere, after the obvious contribution to science of being able to sequence their genes and observe their behavior and perhaps trying to captively breed them for institutional use, how exactly would they enrich the world? In all likelihood their existence would just create a small protected area where we'd keep people from interfering with them and hope, for some pointless sentimental reason, that they don't finally blink out of existence.

The mere fact that some random thing exists doesn't mean it does anything useful for the planet in general, or that its existence or non-existence matters or should matter to anyone or anything else. There are many species which are currently endangered, and likely to go extinct whether we actively protect them or not. There are many more species whose existence we aren't even aware of, which will go extinct before we even discover them--and many will go extinct due to causes other than man. The world goes on. Why should we care that "there is no going back"? The loss of most of these species is entirely irrelevant to every other species, including man; some species they interact with may decline, and others they interact with or compete with will flourish in their absence. This is just nature at work. There's no inherent reason to lament it or to try to stop it.

If the Snail Darter disappeared today, aside from the snails it eats and the environmentalists who'd bemoan its loss, no one and nothing would take notice. But, it's actually gone from "endangered" to merely "threatened" because humans transplanted it to a new river ecosystem--which raises many further questions about why human intervention and interference and introduction of new species should be viewed as positive in some contexts and not in others, but that's a different can of worms.

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"Knee-jerk" preservation and conservation is necessary even if you want us to think hard about whether it's ultimately the course to go.

No, it's really not, as above. The mere existence of a thing (or animal, or person, etc.) does not automatically imply the necessity of an action. The fact that you seem to think it does indicates a large gap in your reasoning. "Here is a rare medium blue cube. There are many light blue cubes and dark blue cubes, and many medium blue cubes of a slightly different hue; but there are very few medium blue cubes of this precise hue. Therefore we must protect all the medium blue cubes of this particular hue--even at great cost--and hope they survive." Very rational and necessary indeed.

The point of my post was merely that efforts at conservation should be deliberative and rational, rather than knee-jerk emotive and ideological lashings-out at anything seen to have an effect on the arbitrary status quo.

The problem is that once endangered species are extinct, there is no going back.

Which matters why exactly?

If we do decide after rational discourse and evaluation that we want to preserve a species or an ecosystem, that thing still has to exist by the time we make our decision. For many species and their environments, time runs out before we can assess the situation.

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Most species that have existed are extinct, and not because of anything humans have done.

Most species that have existed went extinct long before we got here. We obviously do not depend on them (except as fuel) the way we depend on extant species and ecology. This is the most incredibly pseudo-intellectual argument I've ever heard about environmentalism.

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The mere fact that some random thing exists doesn't mean it does anything useful for the planet in general, or that its existence or non-existence matters or should matter to anyone or anything else. There are many species which are currently endangered, and likely to go extinct whether we actively protect them or not. There are many more species whose existence we aren't even aware of, which will go extinct before we even discover them--and many will go extinct due to causes other than man. The world goes on. Why should we care that "there is no going back"?

Because the things we kill off in our ignorance can turn out to be the key to a healthy, productive environment. Disrupting the food web without regard for the nodes in it is a great way to trigger disasters like population explosions of pest organisms, or crashes (e.g. fish kills). You have to understand what kind of ecology an environment runs on to see how potentially catastrophic events can play out. It's best to do this with as few environmental stresses as possible instead of acting as though we can barge ahead in ignorance. But that seems to be your preferred modus operandi for just about anything concerning industrialization or development.

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No, it's really not, as above. The mere existence of a thing (or animal, or person, etc.) does not automatically imply the necessity of an action. The fact that you seem to think it does indicates a large gap in your reasoning. "Here is a rare medium blue cube. There are many light blue cubes and dark blue cubes, and many medium blue cubes of a slightly different hue; but there are very few medium blue cubes of this precise hue. Therefore we must protect all the medium blue cubes of this particular hue--even at great cost--and hope they survive." Very rational and necessary indeed.

What do the cubes do? You seem to think about this as though the creatures in an ecosystem don't participate in the processes that make it habitable or productive, even for us. You have never given us an argument based on how biology works.

The point of my post was merely that efforts at conservation should be deliberative and rational, rather than knee-jerk emotive and ideological lashings-out at anything seen to have an effect on the arbitrary status quo.

The problem is that once endangered species are extinct, there is no going back.

Which matters why exactly?

If we do decide after rational discourse and evaluation that we want to preserve a species or an ecosystem, that thing still has to exist by the time we make our decision. For many species and their environments, time runs out before we can assess the situation.

Is there an example of this with a significant species in modern American history? We should reflect however that many species of dubious value (according to my metrics of course; to environmentalists they all have value) have been protected by the Endangered Species Act for decades now, with much research done. But there's not even a mechanism to list a species in a hypothetical "threatened or endangered but not ecologically significant" category. The nonexistence of such a thing, in itself, points to a preserve-everything-as-it-is-at-all-costs ideology at work.

Wheels Of Confusion wrote:

What do the cubes do? You seem to think about this as though the creatures in an ecosystem don't participate in the processes that make it habitable or productive, even for us. You have never given us an argument based on how biology works.

Neither have you actually--you just assume important and wide-reaching but unspecified interrelations by default, whereas my default position is that any interrelations which do exist are likely to not be so wide-reaching as to imperil entire significant ecosystems or significant human interests unless we have evidence or theoretical reasoning to the contrary. Given the number of species extant on the planet--perhaps 8 or 9 million--statistics alone would make my position the more rational default.

I certainly don't think we should be going around wiping out species indiscriminately, as we have in the past; we have more knowledge about the impacts of our actions now, and we should be using it. But that's the key: we should be using that knowledge to make rational choices, rather than blindly swinging the pendulum the opposite way and going from the indiscriminate species elimination of the past to the indiscriminate species preservation which is current policy.

There are obvious cases like wolves where the elimination of a species affects entire significant ecosystems and is/was driven by human activity, and other obvious cases like the Northern Spotted Owl where the presence or absence of the particular species is more or less irrelevant to the larger ecosystem (there are similar raptors in its range) and where human activity isn't the primary driver of species loss (competition and encroachment from other species is). In fact, in the latter case, we've taken the extraordinary step of trying to turn back the progress of natural selection and species competition and are killing a more successful raptor to save the less successful one:

Now, we can make an argument that Northern Spotted Owls deserve special protection at significant cost (a cost particularly borne by all those barred owls we're killing), based on human sentiment toward majestic raptors or any number of other factors. But the argument that it does something unique for its ecosystem and that ecosystem would collapse without it would be specious since many other species share its niche--and some are doing a better job in that niche.

The problem is, environmentalists don't typically look at the world that way and use our knowledge to make such rational and discriminating choices; their default argument is that all species in danger should be protected, whether it's the majestic Northern Spotted Owl or the completely insignificant Snail Darter. That's the sort of attitude I find to be irrational and unreasonable, based on ideology and sentiment rather than reason--and the way the Endangered Species Act and similar legislation has been administered for the past 30+ years is basically that attitude translated into policy. Should we go around like a giant oaf squashing every species underfoot?--absolutely not. Should we expend significant resources to protect every threatened species?--also absolutely not. Moderation and reason in all things. If we have evidence or theory to believe a species is important to a significant ecosystem, by all means we should protect it even at great cost. If we have no such evidence or theory, we should protect it at significant cost only if we have some other particular reason to. The mere fact of its existence, however, is like the existence of our rare medium blue cubes: just because something is rare doesn't mean it has inherent value and must be protected.